Abstract
The Greek case of local networks includes an analysis of municipal advisory committees, councils for the integration of migrants and refugees, school committees, and local development agencies. These networks can be seen as typical for local state-society relations in Greece, representing variance along the three suggested analytical dimensions of autonomy, group coherence, and relevance in local policy-making. Beyond the description of the main features of each network (general framework, mandate, and structure), they are evaluated according to the suggested typology in this volume. We argue that these networks constitute incomplete institutionalization processes, which mobilize local potential, but they also hit upon significant resistance from traditional mechanisms of hierarchical, fragmented, clientelist state-society relations. The analysis and assessment of the networks present evidence of self-reflective, delegated, and collaborative networks.
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Notes
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In the previous law the obligation to constitute a municipal advisory committee referred to municipalities with a population of more than 10,000 inhabitants. The duration of the mandate was only two years and not the whole period of the mandate of the local council.
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Greece became a transit country for over 1,000,000 million migrants and refugees in the period 2014–2016. After closing of the northern border in early March 2016, over 55,000 migrants and refugees remained in the country and were distributed mainly in four Aegean islands and in the mainland. However, Greece has also been both a transit and a destination country from the 1990s. The inflows of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in the country raised dramatically in 2015, caused by a large number of refugees from Syria.
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The participation of representatives of parents of the pupils presupposes the establishment and operation of clubs of parents as associations according to the provisions of article 53 of Law 1566/85 and the Civil Code (1566/85). The pupils’ parents of each public school constitute a parent club that bears the name of the school. The management of the parents’ club is elected. This applies also to any representative in the bodies provided by the applicable legislation.
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When in the meetings of the Council of the School Committee issues concerning a particular school unit are discussed, then the relevant director of the unit participates and has the right to vote.
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The school council consists of the director of each school and representatives from the teacher’s association, student community, and parent’s association. The school council identifies the needs and problems that arise in the operation of each school and formulates its proposals to the unified school committee that belongs to it.
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The ‘Kapodistrias’ reform reduced the number of municipalities from about 6000 to 1034 and led to compulsory mergers of local government enterprises.
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The ‘Kallikratis’ reform reduced the number of municipalities from 1034 to 325. Furthermore, it obliged the merged new municipalities to establish only two legal entities, subject to public law. This launched another radical consolidation among municipal companies and reduced their number by 70 percent (Tsekos and Triantafylopoulou 2016).
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Getimis, P. (2021). Local State-Society Relations in Greece. In: Teles, F., Gendźwiłł, A., Stănuș, C., Heinelt, H. (eds) Close Ties in European Local Governance. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44794-6_12
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